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Zero Day
"Zero Day" is the twenty-first episode of season 2, and overall the forty-fourth produced hour of Person of Interest. It originally aired on May 2, 2013 Synopsis Reese and Finch realize that a virus has rendered the Machine erratic, causing it to issue numbers irregularly. As they race against the viral countdown, the team searches for a tech millionaire so elusive no one has ever seen him. Also, Detective Carter's mission to bring Cal Beecher's murderer to justice lands her squarely within the sights of the HR criminal organization. Episode Notes * The episode draws its name from the technological term a zero-day attack, an attack (or threat) that exploits a previously unknown vulnerability in computer software. Because the vulnerability is unknown, it leaves software engineers with no time to fix the weakness before the attack. * The Machine has a rudimentary form of memory that it is erased at midnight. Finch devised this function, as a way of removing anomalies. Despite this The Machine, demonstrating an instinct for self-preservation, creates & adopts the Thornhill identity. Just as it has the instinct to protect Finch, The Machine shows that it also has basic natural/animal instincts, and thus must be "alive" & perhaps even sentient in some sense (Harold & Root in The Machine's office.) * Near the end of the episode while The Machine is rebooting, it spits out a message written in binary code. When its converted to ASCII characters the phrase "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" is revealed. This Latin phrase is translated as "Who will guard the guards themselves?", a variation on the old axiom "Who watches the watchers?" * Nathan Ingram was placed in the irrelevant list, foreshadowing his death. * "Zero Day" takes place over the course of Day 4138 of the Machine's operation, or April 30, 2013. Trivia * A NOC (Non-official Cover) is an identity used when spy operates in a country without the protection of diplomatic immunity. * The failed bomber mentioned by Special Counsel (and projected on his monitor), may refer to the Nigerian underwear bomber story, which took place aboard a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit in December 2009. * Finch reroutes the Machine's call to its admin by accessing the telephone junction box. Once the call was established, he spliced the lines in order to create a "party line", where two or more subscribers share the same phone number, so that two persons can co-administer the Machine. Party lines are seldom used now, but were common in the early days of the telephone service, when phone usage was cost-prohibitive and phone lines were scarce. Quotes * "The Machine is being buried under an avalanche of false data, but somehow it was able to get us his number." - Finch * "I've seen it dozens of times before. A NOC sets up a business, residence, a whole life. Then the operation gets scrapped. No one cleans up the fake ID, and you wind up chasing empty town cars around the city." -Reese * "So if you're like me, and we both know you are, you designed the Machine so that a catastrophic crash puts it into a remote debugging protocol; a God mode that gives the admin full access to all of its data." -Root * "Five and a half months ago, Thornhill opened this account with a single penny. Twenty-four hours and thousands of microtransactions later, his balance had ballooned to just over twenty million dollars. And he immediately began trying to buy up pay phone companies all over the city." -Finch External Links *Animated .gif of the Machine's reboot *Animated .gif of the car's explosion Promo Category:Episodes Category:Season 2